Gain More Money From A Writing Award - Exactly How To Optimise Your Competition Profits

Gain More Money From A Writing Award - Exactly How To Optimise Your Competition Profits

By:


So you have collected a writing award? Wonderful! What can you do at this point to capitalize on your award, so that it can bring you still more revenue?

Smart award scheme PR people will do every little thing that they can to publicise your win. Certainly, your author's name, plus maybe your successful tale, should show up in their web site or another publication to honor you and also - not least - to encourage potential contestants to enter in the next event.

All money apart, to view your story publicized and readable by many of people is a pleasure all by itself. Countless prize winners in a creative writing contest declare that the recognition is a lot more pleasing than the profits. Certainly, many contest promoters have pondered precisely why they bother to mention money at all.

Here's a word of advice: devise a 'personal biog' kit easily accessible for all those occasions, almost certainly a lot of them, when the contest organizer will ask you: 'do send me a photo and also roughly 100 words explaining your profession, age, spouse and children, spare-time activities, earlier published tales and also any writers' magazines or Yahoo blogs you subscribe to'.

These details are very important to a marketing-wise organizer. If you subscribe to an author's periodical or online blog, they will likely lust to advertise your new achievement in that place to entice future contestants. They may also advise your neighborhood newspaper or radio.. (Do make it crystal clear to your publicists, when they call you, whether or not you're comfortable with such publicity.)

Put together that dossier into a ready-to-hand folder on your hard drive plus a suitable digital photograph. If however you own a personal blog or website that boasts of your current creative work a number of promoters will likely be willing to mention its URL. That may attract extra traffic to your blog.

Of course, there's extra profit to be made by putting together your stories - whether they gain a prize or fail to win - into an e book or some other electronic item and selling the stories from your website. You could also offer your fiction as a standard printed publication, manufactured in smallish volumes employing a POD company.

You can easily get the do's and don'ts of ebook manufacture on-line.

Do take note that many promoters of story writing contests will want you to enter previously unpublished stories. So they may well regard tales you sell at your own site as 'already published' works. Note the small print!

Precisely what can you gain from entering story contests?

You are not going to exceed the net income of Phillippa Gregory by entering writing contests by themselves, although your own tales will probably be a lot better. No matter. Let's work the math...

Imagine you go into merely 120 competitions every year you will probably net about $4500. That's provided you're a skilled author, of course.

In time, you will do far better as your writing gets better and you gain a sense for what contest judges want. If your success average goes up, you can certainly notch up $8000 or more annually.

That is if you don't get a really big award in four to five figures. Nevertheless, it's quite possible, if you persevere and your writing gets better - you certainly will. In all probability you'll acquire several serious awards in a year.

At that stage you may wish to increase your commitment to the number of entries you enter and your net income will rise accordingly.

True, by then you may be dedicating almost every free time moment to entering contests. But many thousands of folks do exactly that! Various popular publications and web sites cater for professional contest enthusiasts. Almost every day of the week these people accept payouts, that range from a Hershey bar to a five figure dollar sum or some exotic holiday getaway.

In fact, at this point you might not have to enter any more contests!

Why? You may at this point possess a portfolio of countless high-quality tested tales plus a fabulous list of prize successes to talk about. You can approach a literary agent with a more substantial program that you have been engaged on, such as a major novel.

For sure, a single prize every now and then in some obscure contest will not win over a critical agent. However a dozen or more major wins definitely will, particularly if they also include several highly renowned competitions. In that case a publisher might actually look over your hard work and give you a contract. And your life will shift. Very happily.

You will be having fun in your very own win-win contest workshop. Step one towards a highly profitable fiction career is quite frequently to become a semi-professional contest entrant.

About the Author:
Dr John Yeoman, PhD Creative Writing, is chairman of the writing award centre Writers' Village. A university tutor in short story writing, he has been for many years a competition judge. Discover dozens of wily tips to win major prizes in his big guide How to Win Writing Contests for Profit. Get it free now at:
http://www.writers-village.org/writing_award



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


Tags: , , , , , , ,

|

Loading...
Related....
Videos...

Recent Writing-and-Speaking Articles

Comments

Still can't find what you are looking for? Search for it!

Loading

Site Navigation:

Copyright 2005-2011 ArticleSnatch, LLC - All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy | Terms of Service.